I was drying my nails in a salon, when a girl near me began ranting against America. She savaged our handling of Vietnam, railed against interference in other countries and our old fight against Communism. In every instance and in every way she derided and chided until I simply had to speak up.
“Excuse me, miss, but I lived through some of that and can tell you much of what you’re saying just isn’t true.” I asked where she attended school and she replied she was majoring in government at American University in DC . This was what her professors were teaching her. “Do they ever say anything positive about the U.S., I asked?” “No,” she said quietly…without defiance. “Then doesn’t that tell you something? Do you really think there is nothing good about our country?” She looked at me with silence in one of the few times in my life I felt a random challenge might have caused a light to glow.
The world hates America. We know this because all three networks, the Associated Press, the New York Times and their philosophical paper counterparts all tell us so. …as do professors … plus countless history teachers in high schools across the nation. Americans drove out and slaughtered the Indians…Americans bought and sold slaves…Americans tried to force their ways on other nations…Americans swallowed up global culture and waged wars to get its way. They write it, speak about and show it on A& E so it must be true.
A few years ago some Canadian friends pulled me aside and expressed with great passion that America was their last hope for the natural world. They talked of how our elections had given them encouragement…they spoke in amazement of electing a “Christian” president…of Americans standing against abortion and fighting homosexual marriage, battles they were losing in their beloved country. They told me that if America falls, the whole world will suffer.
Danesh D’Souza in his book “What’s so Great about America,” said it isn’t so remarkable that America bought and sold slaves, but that she corrected course and restored her black citizens to full rights and privileges. The Pilgrims came in part to tell the Indians about a saviour and in spite of her power, America never conquered a people to create an empire as well she could have. America has evangelized the world, clothed it, fed it, patched it up after wars and tsunamis.
French historian Alexis de Toqueville observed two centuries ago that “America is great because America is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”
Recently asked by a member of Parliament why he is such a strong ally of America, England’s Prime Minister Tony Blair responded with this:
“A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in…and how many want out. Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you; Jesus Christ and the American G.I. One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.”
As we speak, American GI’s are still doing it….not because they are stupid, but because they are still great….willing to sacrifice for others when the rest of the world…lost and godless simply cannot understand.
Let us pray together that America’s goodness emanating from a very good God can overcome the evil that would cause Her never to be great again.
